Mary Jane Duncan: Sam Hildebrand’s “Sister"

Even in the late winter and early spring of 1865, as it became increasingly obvious that a Union victory in the Civil War was just a matter of time, Missouri women with Southern sympathies continued to come into the clutches of Union justice. Mary Jane Duncan of Madison County was just one example. Although Mary had been outspoken in her support of the Confederacy for a long time, no one turned her in for her disloyalty until some of her neighbors were robbed by guerrillas in early 1865, and the neighbors suspected that Mary might have somehow abetted the bushwhackers.
   Victims of the mid-February raid included Mary’s neighbors Andrew Bray and James Duncan. (It’s not clear whether James Duncan was related to Mary’s husband, Jonathan.) The bushwhackers held up Bray and his family at gunpoint and threatened to blow their brains out. Duncan was away from the house when they came to his place, but they robbed his wife, Elizabeth, and told her they’d kill her husband if they could find him.
   Based on statements Mary had previously made in support of guerrillas, she quickly came under suspicion of having somehow aided or encouraged the guerrillas in the raid. On March 1, several of her neighbors gave statements to W. C. Shattuck, assistant provost marshal at Fredericktown, swearing to Mary’s disloyalty. One of them even claimed she’d heard Mary say that she was Sam Hildebrand’s “sister,” which the woman took to mean “friend.” Hildebrand was a notorious guerrilla leader in southeast Missouri, but it’s not certain whether his band carried out the mid-February 1865 raid in the Duncan neighborhood west of Fredericktown.
   On March 9, General Grenville Dodge ordered that Mary Duncan be brought to St. Louis and then banished to the South. Arrested on the 17th, she was taken to Pilot Knob and forwarded to St. Louis the next day, where she was committed to the Gratiot Street Female Prison.
   The officer who sent Mary to St. Louis asked General Dodge that, if she were banned, her husband and children be allowed to go with her so that the children would not experience a hardship in her absence. The officer was hardly the only person who petitioned for special consideration in her case. Mary herself wrote a letter asking for a speedy trial so that she might return to her children, and a number of citizens of Madison County swore out affidavits vindicating her loyalty.
   On May 1, General Dodge finally revoked Mary’s banishment order, 
and she was allowed to to home.
   This is a considerably shortened version of a chapter in my Lady Rebels of Civil War Missouri book (https://amzn.to/4dDoisS).